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There is one way the White House can ensure everyone is working from the original emails. It can release them publicly. That way, everyone can see exactly what was being said in real-time and in context. It would provide a better understanding of the issues at hand, something the White House claims to want.

At his very challenging briefing Friday, spokesman Jay Carney defended the White House’s efforts to provide information about Benghazi to the public in the hours after the attack. “And our effort has been to be – to provide as much information as we have when it’s available and when we feel confident it’s accurate.”

Carney’s boss made the same claims last fall. “Everything we get, every piece of information we get as we got it, we laid it out for the American people,” he told Jon Stewart on October 18.

He emphasized this point again in an interview with Philadelphia talk radio host Michael Smerconish on October 26. “This is something that the American people can take to the bank. My administration plays this stuff straight. We don’t play politics when it comes to American national security. So what we have consistently done throughout my presidency and what we did in this circumstance is as information came in we gave it to the American people. And as we got new information, we gave that to the American people. And that includes, by the way, members of Congress.”

It’s not too late. The White House can still provide these emails, so that the American people, and that includes members of Congress, have a better understanding of the decision making process that produced the scrubbed talking points on September 15, 2012.

More by Stephen F. Hayes

To cite just one example: We don’t know who provided the Ben Rhodes email to CNN, but the leak did not include the earlier emails in the chain among top administration officials. If it had, we would know more about a curious reference on page 20 of the House GOP report. The report describes an email we now know was written by State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland, who wrote to the group that earlier edits to the Benghazi talking points did not “resolve all my issues or those of my building leadership.” And then, according to the House report, Nuland’s email reported “that the Department’s leadership was consulting with [national security staff].’”

Is this characterization from the House report accurate? Did the consultation happen? If so, who in the State Department leadership spoke with the White House’s national security staff? Why weren’t they satisfied with the earlier edits? What were the remaining “issues” with the talking points?